Daniel O'Hara
Daniel Anthony O'Hara (born October 17, 1946 in Watertown, SD) is best known for his innovations in data conversions and data translations. He is the owner of the Dallas, Texas based company called Universal Conversion Technologies that provides data migration services.
Data Conversion and Data Migration Services
Background
O'Hara began his career with Mutual Service Insurance (MSI) doing new system development for insurance applications including Group Pensions and Group Health Insurance. After 7 years with MSI, he joined Informatics as a Senior Consultant with responsibilities that included project management, account management, and product development. Informatics was a new company that had created the LifeComm policy administration system. O'Hara became even more involved in data conversions at Informatics where a data migration from the old system to the new LifeComm system was usually required. Eight years later, Informatics was bought by Continuum and O'Hara continued his role supporting data migrations and conversions but with emphasis on the new Continuum product, CCA.
During this period, virtually all complex data migration projects like these were completed by developing custom data conversion programs using the software development techniques in use at that time. After supporting several data conversion and migration projects for both Informatics and Continuum, O'Hara noticed that they often took twice as long and cost twice as much as estimated. He also noticed that the following problems were common to each project: 1) the projects were driven by technicians and programmers who lacked the business insight that was necessary for success, 2) the business analysts that had the necessary business insight played no meaningful role in the project until final testing, and 3) each project resulted in the redevelopment of a set of very similar tools and components. In 1988, with this in mind, he created his vision of the Conversion CASE Tools, a product and methodology that would enable product experts to create conversion source code and distribute a set of common utilities to be used within a repeatable conversion process and began to seek opportunities to develop and apply the approach.
In 1989, Perich Systems (a joint venture between Perot Systems and ICH Insurance) hired O'Hara and gave him the opportunity to develop the methodology and tools to support their pending conversions. Perich Systems had a complicated and high risk project to convert 15 different administration systems owned by 5 geographically distributed ICH subsidiaries to a single CK4 policy administration system. The existing systems included Life70, LifeComm, VantageOne, VantageULA, homegrown systems, and others. O'Hara designed the Conversion CASE Tools application and created the methodology and hired David Croslin
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, a programming contractor, to do the application coding. A year later, the application was in use at ICH and became the critical component in multiple conversions. Perich Systems later dissolved and ICH became the owner of the Conversion CASE Tools. In 1992, O'Hara purchased the rights to the tools and technology from ICH Insurance, and started Universal Conversion Technologies.
Methodology Overview
The conversion methodology and toolset created by O'Hara are inseparable. A cornerstone of the methodology is that the business analysts, who possess the crucial business knowledge, drive the conversion efforts and create their own source code independently of programmers. This is accomplished by the toolset which collects business rules from the business analysts as input and produces clear documentation and compilable conversion source code modules. These conversion modules are used to perform the actual data conversion and the documentation provides a concise description of the actions they take to convert the data. While the business analysts use the tools to create the conversion modules, the programmers create the high level program and configure it to perform the required I/O on the source and target systems. This partnership greatly shortens the solution development timeline and allows executable tests to be conducted very early in the development lifecycle.
In an era where the emphasis of software development efforts was in exhaustive efforts to define all requirements at the outset of the development lifecycle using SSADM, O'Hara's conversion methodology was novel. It rejected the concept that all characteristics of the incoming data could be known before the traditional software development implementation phase began. Instead it focused on the probability that much information AbOUT the data would not be discovered until the testing phases. The business analysts partnership with the programmers and the shortened timeline that were made possible by the tools allowed the testing phases to be positioned much earlier in the lifecycle than the traditional solution. These early testing phases exposed unknown data characteristics much earlier in the lifecycle which further shortened the timelines and increased the accuracy of the conversion.
A typical application of the methodology to a conversion project involves data auditing in the earliest testing stages. In data auditing, auditing logic is entered into the tools by the business analysts and turned into source code to identify the characteristics of incoming data. As data characteristics become known, conversion logic is added to replace or supplement the audit logic. This continues until all data is converted successfully. The methodology also prescribes the selection and processing of increasingly larger sets of data. As more data characteristics are identified, the conversion solution is evolved. The process of solution evolution through iterative improvements is very similar to the Agile software development methodology introduced in the early 2000's.
In addition to early test cycles, O'Hara's methodology was one of the first to focus on transaction-based conversions. A transaction–based conversion creates target system transaction instructions instead of raw target data. These transactions are processed by the business layer of the target system and create a more accurate result. The toolset is able to create many different kinds of transactions for various systems and also supports the creation of XML transactions.
Universal Conversion Technologies
Since it was founded in 1992, Universal Conversion Technologies (UCT) has completed hundreds of successful conversion projects using the same technology, methodology, and an ever improving toolset. UCT has performed conversions for major life insurance companies, property and casualty insurance companies, and government institutions (court records).
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In 2000, UCT began a comprehensive modernization effort of its tools.
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In 2001, UCT released the C-based version of its Conversion CASE Tools called the Data Conversion Engineer (DCE). DCE provided greater platform portability and created the framework for multi-language code generation. In 2002, UCT released a web-based user interface called the Data Conversion Architect (DCA) that allows business analysts on the same team to collaborate in the creation of conversion source modules. Since its introduction, DCA has benefitted from many enhancements and improvements. The latest release of DCA is a significant improvement over its predecessors; it is more robust and more capable with further reporting and automated logic building services.
UCT's target market is complex data conversions. A complex conversion typically involves legacy systems, large data volumes, homegrown data storage methods, complex business rules, multiple systems, high reliability requirements, and/or other data migration challenges that make the use of simple ETL tools impractical and call for the development of custom conversion programs. Over the last 18 years UCT has established a strong brand specializing in these projects and has succeeded in providing high quality service, removing data migrations from the critical path, and completing projects on time and under budget.
Community Involvement
O'Hara and Universal Conversion Technologies are strong supporters of community charitable organizations. He is an active supporter of Habitat for Humanity, serving as Vice President on the local board of directors. He also supports St. Jude's Hospital, Union Gospel Mission of Dallas, Haiti Relief, MD Anderson Cancer Center, and PAWS in the City.